Sonnet for haters

You think of us as fearsome lowly freaks

And count it fun to laugh at us or glare.

Just lonely trannies walking down the streets

You cannot know that we are everywhere

For one you see another ten you don’t

With lives unlived and words they can’t break through

They never give it face or won’t 

because they are afraid …afraid of you.

They fear that you will rob them of their jobs

And tremble that your love for them will chill.

They dread you’ll turn to bloody killing mobs.

They fear because they know you …and you will.

But those of us not hiding in our cage

Are watching very close and full of rage.

On being a monster: part 2

We are all swimming in a sea of microbes, but that doesn’t mean we are constantly sick.  You only get sick when your body is vulnerable to disease …your immunity is lowered or even exhausted. 

When you are trans, you swim in a sea of angry villagers constantly looking for a way to make you feel like crap …be it making sure you can’t get work or shunning you from family gatherings.  When you’re strong, they can’t touch you.  You can slough off the torches and the pitchforks with style, groaning and flailing your arms to keep them away.   They can’t accept you as human with human rights?  Fine.  You don’t need them.  They fire you from your job because they can’t work with an “it?”  Intercourse them!  You’ll find another job. 

But you’re just one little creature.  You can’t keep them at bay forever.  If you tire, your friends will try to help by prodding you into fighting again.  Don’t let them get to you, they say.  You are strong.  You are powerful.  But cracking a whip will only work for a little time.  Ultimately it just exhausts you even more.  And as soon as the angry villagers see any sort of weakness, they will pounce.  They will double their efforts.  They will provide huge dings to your self-esteem and won’t let up until they have you in chains again and whimpering in the dungeon unable to move…unable to even look up and face your tormentors. 

That’s where I am now.  Almost immediately upon paying for my surgery, I received nearly daily blows to my feelings of worthiness.  They just kept coming, over and over again.  I couldn’t come to terms with one before I was inundated with three more.  I’ve come to the point that I feel like the monster in the dungeon, unable to deal with any of the torches shoved in my face and piling up. I can’t get my connection with my god.  I can’t relax.  And I’m finding it difficult to even move.

To everyone who tried to prop me up and comfort me….I love you all very much.  I DO feel loved.  In fact, I continually reread the more awesome compliments because they are that awesome and that comforting.  But I’m really, really tired.    

Hothouse paranoid

It would be hideously narcissistic of me to assume that I should not be ignored at the gym, but people seem to go out of their way to ignore me.  It’s particularly bad in the sauna.  If I enter a sauna when others are already sitting and sweating, all conversation stops and the women sit in awkward silence or quickly leave.  If I’m alone in the sauna as others enter, they often stay for one awkward moment before leaving …all without ever acknowledging my presence. 

It’s at moments like these that my familial paranoia flares up.  I’m sure they ALL know I’m trans.  I haven’t been fooling anyone with this whole “woman” crap…except perhaps myself.

One woman always seemed particularly annoyed with my presence.  On top of all the aforementioned shunning, one time she came into the sauna, noticed me sitting in the corner, said, “Oh hell no,” and left in a huff.  I was so embarrassed that I left the gym in tears and nearly didn’t come back.

But one day I was uncustomarily at the gym in the evening.  The sauna was teeming with glistening, half-naked women.  I crept to the one place that opened up for me and only then noticed my nemesis fidgeting and glaring at me from the side.  I don’t know if she felt supported by the others, but this time she did not leave. Instead, she waited until I was settled and broke the sultry silence by looking directly at me and saying tersely, “so, what’s your deal, huh?” 

Rather than spring to my defense, the other women just looked at me as though they too wanted to know the answer to that question.

So, here it was at last.  The final confrontation.  My riposte was swift and witty.  “I’m sorry?”

“What’s your deal?  Are you like a model or something?”

I was floored.  A model? Really?  THAT’S why you’ve been shunning me?  So, I responded in the only appropriate fashion left to me.  “Yes.  Yes I am a model.  That’s exactly what I am.”

There was much smiling and nodding.   

Open MIKE Night

A friend recently sent me this message:

"It's OPEN MIC. If you say Open MIKE others will make fun of you behind your back. Unless you are doing it to be ironic then i apologize.. but it's still MIC."

The following is my response:


Thank you for your concern with my well-being, but I will continue to spell the word as "mike" for the following reasons:


1. I am far too old to yield to the vagaries and corruptions of my beloved English by the likes of you young whippersnappers. You have to understand that I am such an antiquarian that I still haven't fully accepted the fracophonization of the language in 1066.

2. My usage is not "ironic" as that would imply the term was used to mean the opposite of what was stated. Unless, of course, you meant ironic in the sense of "Socratic Irony" which would imply that I was feigning ignorance in order to show others logical inconsistencies in their positions. While that is a guilty little pleasure of mine, it requires that my usage was deliberate, which it was not. The word you were looking for is "malapropism."


3. If people are laughing at me behind my back, I'll take that over not laughing at me at all.

4. I haven't had an "open mic" since I schtupped Maggie Finn back in '76.

My tardis

I love my tardis.  I love its sleek lines and sensual interior.  The Doctor, who doesn’t know the first thing about proper operational transmat maintenance, has a tardis perpetually stuck in 1960’s police box mode.   I, on the other hand, graduated Ridicule Exaltationes from the Gallifreyan Academy.   (Our school fight song was “If you’ve got the money, Honey, I’ve got the time.”)   My tardis, hand crafted by the dog and I, has a fully functioning chameleon chip.  In its resting state (i.e. when it’s not associated with a particular space-time planck unit) it is a gleaming blue art deco edifice.   Of course, when it’s in your time stream, the chameleon chip kicks in fully and the tardis bears a remarkable resemblance to a blue 2013 Honda Civic. 

There are those who might say that it’s not a proper tardis, since it has trouble travelling through more than a single time stream.  But that is only true when you consider “real” time.  In orthogonal imaginary time, it can fly through multiple time streams like gas through a Slitheen.  It is much more efficient at travelling through space-time than that ridiculous wooden box you see on the tele, which can’t move at all without forklifts and massive amounts of CGI.  My tardis can actually get 48.4 MPG (miles per gravitino) on the highway and the ride is smooth and relaxing, without that irritating grinding noise you hear whenever the Doctor forgets to release the break.    

  

I love my tardis.  I think I’ll call her “Sexy.”